Convener's Report
Item 4 will be brief. I have asked for commentaries on fact-finding visits. The first will be a brief report by Maureen Macmillan on a visit to Reliance Monitoring Services.
The visit was interesting and informative. We saw the equipment and the computer screens where all the information is stored on people who are subject to restriction of liberty orders, and we got an overview of how the system works. The equipment is not terribly obtrusive, so it is not a great embarrassment to the person who uses it. The box with the receiver that receives the signal from the tag looks just like a piece of electronic equipment, such as a digital versatile disk player. People do not have to have a huge machine in their house.
It is interesting that the machine can not only restrict someone from leaving their house, but can keep them away from places they should not go under an interdict.
Interesting.
Yes, it is interesting. It can keep them away from a shopping centre where they have been shoplifting, for example.
How does it do that?
This is not a question-and-answer session.
I could attempt to explain it.
I refer Michael Matheson to the peach-coloured paper—J1/03/3/7.
The monitoring equipment was capable of doing that. The equipment might not have been the same, but it was similar. It could also be used to monitor where sex offenders are.
Of course, breaches are carefully monitored. The minutes of breach are counted up, and when it reaches a certain level—I think it is an hour, but I cannot remember—it is reported. Sometimes people breach for 2 minutes, because they run out to get cigarettes from the ice-cream van. All those breaches are noted and challenged, so that people do not feel that they can get away with being sloppy.
Does the equipment say that the person has been out to the ice-cream van, or does it not say where they have been?
It does not say where they have been, but it notes that they have breached for two minutes or five minutes or whatever. At first people probably thought that they could get away with that, but all the little breaches are checked up on. A breach is not passed to court if it is between one and four minutes, but if the offender breaches for longer, or if the breaches start to pile up, they are referred to the court and then, as we heard in evidence from the police, a warrant might be issued for the person to come back to court.
Reliance Monitoring Services employs people to service the system throughout the country, even in some quite remote islands.
The people who go round to talk to offenders about how the system works are usually not police or social workers but just ordinary people in the community who might also work as a nurse or a builder or something like that. They answer any questions and, assuming that everything is going all right, they go round once a month to ensure that everything is okay and to chat to the offender about how things are going.
Obviously, the people from Reliance would turn up on the dot if there was a problem, such as if there was a breach or if the machine stopped working. Also, offenders have sometimes tried to remove the tag and pretend that the dog bit it off or something like that. We heard some interesting stories about people who had tried to pretend that some strange accident had happened that meant that the tag became detached.
A risk assessment is done before the Reliance workers go into people's homes. As the police told us, they and social workers draw up a risk profile to ensure that employees are not put at undue risk. There are also on-screen notes to warn that a person has a Rottweiler or that a woman should not attend this person or whatever. I felt that safety was being addressed.
I was also interested in the effect on family relationships. If a young man who is used to going out drinking every night is forced to stay at home, I thought that that might create a lot of tension in the family. I thought that other family members might not always be terribly keen to have him there seven nights a week, but in fact parents—particularly those of younger offenders—say that the tagging has made a tremendous difference to their lives. They feel that they have found their son—or, presumably, daughter—again, because he is now at home being sensible, instead of being out drinking.
I think that there could be issues with people being kept in their home if social work do not understand the existing relationships. Reliance pointed to an instance of a young man who was living with his girlfriend being thrown out. That caused great problems because offenders cannot be tagged if they do not have an address. In that instance, Reliance had to spend quite a lot of time getting the person into alternative accommodation. The procedure is not simple and lots of problems often become associated with it.
Nevertheless, Reliance thought that there was great room for development of RLOs, particularly alongside things such as intensive probation. Such orders can keep people in a place where they do not get into trouble and where they can be given intensive programmes that try to change their offending behaviour. The visit was very interesting indeed.
The last point is that some areas in Scotland have not yet used RLOs, despite the fact that they are available throughout the country. It seems that one or two sheriffdoms have decided that RLOs are not the best way forward. The people at Reliance Monitoring Services were confident that, as they went out to talk to the judiciary about the programme, more and more sheriffs would take up the option.
Thank you. Will Lord James Douglas-Hamilton say a brief word about his visit to HMP and YOI Cornton Vale?
The visit was extremely interesting. One point that may be of relevance to the committee is that I believe that the governor, who was asked to send in her views on alternatives to custody, has not done so because she may have been prevailed on by the other governors. She indicated to us that the governors were rather awe-struck—if I may put it diplomatically—by the committee.
What was your reaction to hearing that the governors were awe-struck by our committee?
I was given to understand that the governors regarded the committee as having been a good deal more effective than they had anticipated.
I take it that that is no bad thing.
It was interesting to see how prisoners are treated at Cornton Vale. Uppermost in people's minds was whether the best disposal had been made in every case.
For me, it was particularly interesting to find out how Cornton Vale treats pregnant women and women who had their babies in prison. It seems to have worked that out with the social work department as effectively as possible. The medical facilities seem to be in very good order. The troubles that Cornton Vale had in the past seem to be behind it to a large extent.
I will say a little bit about the drugs court before I let Michael Matheson or Wendy Alexander talk about Freagarrach.
I was neutral about drugs courts when I first heard about them, but I must say that I was impressed by what I saw. It takes a special kind of sheriff to go through the training and be committed to the process. Drugs courts are not a soft option. As I said when we were questioning the witnesses from the police, one man actually said, "Please send me to prison."
The sheriff remarked on one man's appearance. He was extremely smart—he was in a suit and looked really nice. We had not seen the before; we saw only the after. I understand that, before, he had been beaten up, was all marked and his clothing was dirty and in disarray because of alcohol problems. When we saw him, he was smartened. Those who appear before the drugs court are not the kind of people who have somebody smartening them up to appear before the sheriff, because by that stage they are often out on their tod. Drug testing and treatment orders are open only to persistent offenders who have reached rock bottom. They have to sign up to them.
I surprise myself by saying that the drugs court impressed me. I would like the system to be extended to those with severe alcohol problems—that is a personal view—and to the rest of Scotland. The drugs court is very worth while.
Our visit to Freagarrach was also useful. What struck me most about the project was the intensity of the work that is done with the offenders. From the views that I received from individuals who were going through the programme, it was clear that they found it beneficial. It probably gave one of the chaps I spoke to some direction in what he wanted to do with his life. He had been caught up in car crime for an extensive period.
The evidence from the staff at Freagarrach is that they feel that the project has proven to be valuable. From personal experience, I know that the relationships that the Freagarrach staff have with other agencies, including the police, the children's reporter and criminal justice social work, are good. They are based on mutual respect and recognition that the project is effective. As a result of that, a considerable level of trust in the programme's effectiveness has been built up.
I was a little unsure of the number of young people with whom the project could deal, as there were two offenders to one member of staff. That is an extremely high ratio. If such a programme was to be rolled out in other areas, a number of projects might have to be opened, as opposed to one big project, to try to cover the same number of individuals as Freagarrach covers in the Falkirk area.
On Freagarrach's evaluation, 48 of the 50 young people in the programme had drug and alcohol abuse problems. However we conclude our report on alternatives to custody, we must find a way to highlight the frequency and the overwhelming presence of those problems and how they are dealt with effectively. My impression is that the drug action teams are only beginning to struggle towards solutions. We must flag that up.
My second point is how important the Freagarrach staff thought that the surrogate parenting role was. Most of the kids who are into a cycle of persistent offending are extremely young and, almost without exception, have not had what the rest of us would regard as normal parenting. Therefore, simple aspects of parenting, such as the need to listen and to expose the children to leisure opportunities, were important in the project.
The essence of the project is a one-to-one relationship with a personal counsellor. Somehow, its success is the fact that it has insulated itself from the need for the professional staff to spend their entire time going to meetings or reporting to other people. They are simply left to get on with the work. Within the official system, which ostensibly achieves the same objectives, the requirement on social workers to spend time at meetings or recording what they do takes away the opportunity for one-to-one counselling.
Freagarrach has implications for the proposal for a youth court system, which I see mentioned in our papers. The attractive aspect of the proposed youth court system is the fast-tracking element—although it seems to me that we can fast-track in the children's panel system should we wish to do so—but I am not sure that the replication of the penalties available in a summary court gets to the heart of some of the lessons from Freagarrach about surrogate parenting and socialising the individuals.
I was struck by the frustration among Freagarrach staff about moving young people on to employment. They saw their task very much as one of surrogate parenting, socialising and leisure, but they all felt that they did not have the support from the new futures fund, for example, which is ostensibly designed to provide one-to-one counselling into employability and employment. For whatever reason, it was not providing that link. That is another issue that we might want to flag up in the report so that young people do not fall through the cracks when they come off the programme.
Thank you very much. Those reports were comprehensive. As we are on schedule, we will have an interlude of at least 10 minutes—unless members want it to be shortened—before we move on to the item on petitions and the rest of our agenda.
Meeting suspended.
On resuming—